Honor Magic 6 Pro review: the anti-iPhone

You might look at the Honor Magic 6 Pro with its pill-shaped camera cut out and think – what an iPhone copy – and yes, there are some UI bits that do indeed make us think of iPhones, but for the most part, Honor's latest flagship is the least iPhone smartphone around.

While the iPhone 14 Pro introduced Apple's dynamic island, Honor's had a pill-shaped selfie camera for years – see the Magic 4 Pro and Magic 5 Pro – it's just been off to the side. Going beyond the selfie camera, while other brands like Samsung with its Galaxy S24 and Xiaomi with its Xiaomi 14 are channeling iPhone styling in 2024, the Honor Magic 6 Pro is a true individual, with its muted green vegan leather back, quad-curved screen and squircle camera surround.

Focusing on the cameras, this is one area in which Honor's Magic 6 Pro is the least iPhone of all. While Apple goes for a further-reaching 5x periscope, Honor dials back the focal length with a more modest 2.5x zoom. While Apple keeps a lower 12MP pixel count, Honor launches the highest-resolution telephoto camera around at 108MP.

In fact, the whole Magic 6 Pro camera experience seems to think differently. The main camera has a tighter wide angle at 27mm, plugging the gaps between its widest 13mm ultra-wide and 68mm telephoto that bit better. With all three cameras packing high-resolution – at least 50MP – sensors, the Magic 6 Pro really is an exciting camera phone. But is it a good one?

Honor Magic 6 Pro Design and Screen

Nowadays, there's nothing less Apple than a curved screen, and the Magic 6 Pro lives up to its anti-iPhone status with its quad-curved display. Reminiscent of the Huawei P50 Pro, the glass front flows into the sides, top and bottom for a really sleek feel.

The phone is about as big and heavy as mainstream mobiles get, combining premium glass and metal. It weighs 229g – more than the iPhone 15 Pro Max – and its 6.8-inch screen seems huge. Available in two colors, Epi Green and Black, while the green option, which we tested, has polished sides and a vegan leather back, the black Magic 6 Pro has matte sides and a glass back with a satin feel.

Honor's done an excellent job of making the Magic 6 Pro look and feel special and unique. Will it be for everyone? Probably not – especially given its weight – but as we'll come onto, the phone has the biggest battery of any mainstream flagship smartphone, potentially arguing away any complaints about its size.

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With IP68 water and dust resistance, expect flagship durability, and while there is a pre-fitted screen protector out of the box, the Magic 6 Pro doesn't ship with a case, so you'll need to pick one up separately.

The 6.8-inch screen looks very good. It's an OLED panel with a roughly 20:9 aspect ratio, and while it isn't the sharpest around with a FHD+ resolution of 1280 x 2800, its almost iPhone 15 Pro-matching 453 PPI pixel density means it's still sharp enough for pixel-free viewing.

Just like with the iPhone 15 Pro line, the pill-shaped camera cutout does take a bit of getting used to, especially when playing back full-screen content. So too does the peak brightness, which climbs up to 5,000 nits when viewing HDR content. This is seriously bright, and actually uncomfortable to watch content in the dark. 

So while the Magic 6 Pro is excellent when beaming its peak full-screen brightness of 1600 nits, so you'll easily be able to see what you're doing, even outdoors on a sunny day, we'd urge Honor to dial down the peak HDR brightness, or at least calibrate it to be more comfortable when playing back HDR content at low brightness levels in a dark environment.

With a smooth 120Hz refresh rate, and a screen flicker rate of 4320Hz, when you're not squinting at HDR content in lowlight, the Magic 6 Pro's display is very eye-friendly.

The addition of Netflix HDR certification is also a good thing in principle, with third-party services taking advantage of the display's full brightness. For fans of more natural-looking colors, you can also display content in sRGB P3, or Vivid mode, for a cooler, punchier picture.

Honor Magic 6 Pro Camera Specs

The Magic 6 Pro's triple camera is an interesting mix. While other brands are leaning into far-reaching zooms and 1-inch sensors, Honor's doing things a bit differently with its variable aperture main camera and its short-distance periscope camera, which caps out at an optical 2.5x zoom reach. In fact, its three camera focal lengths are generally unique, at 13mm (0.5x zoom), 27mm (1x zoom), and 68mm (2.5x zoom). 

27mm wide camera

Other camera phones tend to feature 24-25mm wide cameras, but Honor punches in a little further at 27mm for a slightly less wide-angle view. The 50MP sensor has a roughly iPhone 15 Pro-sized 1/1.3" size, and it's matched with an f/1.4 to f/2.0 variable aperture lens, which can be manually changed in Pro Mode, and automatically switches in Photo or Video Mode. The lens also packs OIS.

68mm telephoto camera

The 180MP telephoto camera on the Magic 6 Pro is an interesting one. While it only has a 2.5x zoom reach, it's actually a similar focal length to some 3x zoom cameras on phones that have wider main cameras, so don't be too put off by that 2.5x number. It's also the highest-resolution, largest sensor-size (1/1.4-inch) periscope camera on any smartphone, so its in-sensor cropping should compensate well for the nearer zoom range. 

With OIS and a wide (for a periscope camera) f/2.4 lens, while unconventional, the Magic 6 Pro's telephoto camera has a lot going for it on paper.

13mm ultra-wide camera

The ultra-wide looks set to be the least impressive camera on the Magic 6 Pro. Its 50MP, 1/2.88-inch sensor is competitive without being class-leading, while the wide autofocusing f/2.0 lens with a 13mm focal length and nearest focus distance of around 4cm should offer versatility.

Honor Magic 6 Pro Camera Review

The Honor Magic 6 Pro's camera is very good. When taking photos in bright environments, it doesn't struggle with grabbing plenty of detail and thanks to its autofocusing lenses matched with relatively large sensors and some powerful processing, it's also good at creating depth separation.

The nearer optical reach than some phones like the Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra or S24 Ultra is noticeable when capturing zoomed-in, moving, or complex subjects in challenging environments. But when snapping typical still objects or scenes at up to 20x zoom, the Magic 6 Pro leans into computational photography and the sensor's sky-high resolution to deliver surprisingly detailed shots, even if they aren't class-leading. 

There's also plenty of AI at play, with the zoom redrawing simple objects to clean up lines and edges, as illustrated in the images below. This can make photos taken beyond 5x look like an oil painting, and while many will appreciate the lack of grain, photography purists might grumble at the lack of detail.

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With a near-focus distance of about 10cm from the 27mm camera, 4cm from the ultra-wide, and 30cm from the telephoto camera, each can capture its own style of macro photo, making the Honor Magic 6 Pro a great tool for fans of close-up shots.

The 27mm camera also has a variable aperture, switching between f/1.6 and f/2.0. This doesn't make a huge difference when it comes to background blur, but should be more helpful at managing exposure, making the Magic 6 Pro better able to handle dark and bright environments, particularly in video.

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To give you an idea of how the Magic 6 Pro's zoom performs in an ideal environment, the photos below were taken at 68mm/2.6x, 135mm/5x, and 270mm/10x zoom. For anyone who wants a reliable sightseeing phone, Honoe's clearly created a fantastic option.

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If we had to nitpick points that we don't love about the Magic 6 Pro's camera, there would be two. The first which we've covered a bit is the AI-zoom resulting in strange-looking textures, more so than even the Vivo X100 Pro. The second is the telephoto camera's color handling, which isn't always consistent with the wide and ultra-wide cameras. 

While Apple has been known to use wide camera information to manage ultra-wide and telephoto white balance, as you can see below, the Magic 6 Pro warms things way up for the zoomed-in shots. This is most noticeable at night and when there are light sources throwing the camera off.

The camera also struggles when zooming in on moving subjects, and it isn't uncommon to see a bit of highlight clipping in pictures, though at the other end, shadow detail is almost always excellent, with low noise and impressive amounts of salvageable texture.

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The Honor Magic 6 Pro does a good job in low light, though color consistency across zoom ranges isn't locked in across lenses

The Magic 6 Pro is also billed as a great time-freezing tool for sports photography, and while this didn't wow us in low light, in bright environments, it does a solid job.

There's also a lot to be said for the 27mm wide-angle camera being less wide than 24mm competition. This marks what could be a trend towards a potential 35mm primary camera future for smartphones. We've already seen this with the Nubia Z60 Ultra, and Apple's Pro iPhones now have a 35mm digital lens, and we're all for this direction.

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If you shoot a lot of smartphone video, you'll be well served with the Magic 6 Pro's 4K camera that can shoot at up to 60fps. Stabilised across zoom ranges with nippy autofocus, the primary camera is the most impressive and versatile, and there's a Pro mode that can manage aperture control when recording video for plenty of range even in bright environments. 

The selfie camera has a 50MP resolution and autofocus. It was mostly excellent in our time with the phone, particularly when coupled with a steady hand and a patient smile. Rushed selfies occasionally resulted in strange artifacting, possibly down to our phone packing early software, or because the phone couldn't nail processing in time. 

The front camera also captures excellent 4K video and the microphones do a fine job too, making the Magic 6 Pro a solid front and rear camera option for photos and videos

Honor Magic 6 Pro Additional Features

We've criticized Honor for not doing enough to update its interface since it split from Huawei in 2001, and the Honor Magic 6 Pro marks a huge step for the brand's MagicOS interface, with a few features helping it look and feel more unique.

Running MagicOS 8 and Android 14, Honor has applied some meaningful changes to its UI, with app shortcuts that can be expanded to make quick actions very easy, the WhatsApp shortcut is pictured below:

Arguably, the Magic 6 Pro's greatest performance achievement is its facial recognition, which even works with banking apps for near-FaceID levels of practical appeal. This might sound like a small thing, especially for iPhone users, but in the Android world, the Magic 6 Pro is one of the only phones to use 3D depth sensors to level up the face unlocking to be compliant with financial services.

We did run into a couple of issues with the Magic 6 Pro's UI – the Dynamic Island style animation that houses media controls and other elements occasionally bugged out, not allowing us to clear media that had been closed without us disabling and enabling notifications in the settings. This is likely down to the fact our phone ran pre-release software, but is worth noting nonetheless.

Powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 – the ubiquitous top-tier processor for Android flagships in 2024 – the Magic 6 Pro is an excellent gaming phone and powers through tasks, including 4K video edits in Lumafusion 

Honor throttles maxed-out gameplay to prevent heat build-up, so the phone stays relatively cool, but it's still able to run Genshin Impact at maximum graphics settings with very infrequent stutters, and thanks to the huge 5,600mAh battery, does so for longer than virtually all the competition. This puts Honor's latest flagship in the same club as the excellent OnePlus 12, able to make it well into a second day on a single charge with moderate use.

On top of the fact it lasts for ages, the Magic 6 Pro charges at up to 80W (charger sold separately), filling up in around 45 minutes. And with 66W wireless charging, it's also one of the fastest options around for anyone who likes a speedy power-up.

Add an ample 512GB storage and 12GB RAM, and the Honor Magic 6 Pro gives you plenty of space for content – with the storage capacity justifying the punchy price – and multi-tasking performance should keep up with your needs.

With a number of other highlights including an IR blaster so you can use the Magic 6 Pro as a remote control, an in-display fingerprint sensor that works in tandem with the phone's advanced face unlock, and powerful (albeit slightly tinny) dual speakers, Honor's 2024 flagship may not be perfect, but it's very, very good.

Honor Magic 6 Pro Verdict

If you want a camera phone that thinks a bit differently, the Honor Magic 6 Pro could scratch your itch. Its main camera's less wide angle is slightly nearer the revered 35mm mark than Galaxys and iPhones, Honor's processing delivers balanced photos, and the 68mm periscope camera balances nearby tele shots and far-reaching zooming very well. Even the ultra-wide does a commendable job, not dropping the ball without being standout.

Where the Magic 6 Pro struggles is serious zooming beyond 10x. Pictures it takes look good, but they look almost composited, dialing back noise and detail to give you a shot that more closely resembles an illustration. 

If, like most of us, you tend to shoot in the 1-6x zoom range, though, the Magic 6 Pro is a tonic to the slew of iPhone-style phones hitting the market. And with incredibly good battery life, fast charging, a huge amount of storage and a brilliant screen, while we wouldn't quite call the Magic 6 Pro the best camera phone of 2024, it's definitely a contender for best smartphone all things considered.